Remember that old saying that your mom probably taught you–the one that goes “You’ll catch more flies with sugar than vinegar” (or something like that)? Well, when it comes to customer service, mother knows best. I remembered this saying last week when I went out to walk my dog, and found that the trash service had picked up everyone else’s recycling on the street but mine. This after the company hadn’t come at all the previous week.

As I dialed the trash company, all of these angry sentences were going through my head. Things like “How dare you not come one week and then forget my house the next week” and “What kind of people do you employ who miss an entire house’s recycling?” But then I thought about a story I’d done a few months ago for Executive Travel on getting good customer service when bad things happen during a business trip.

I got some great advice from customer-service experts for that story, including these following points:

* Be polite and act professionally.

* Understand that you’re not the first problem this person has had to deal with that day.

* Empathize with that person

* Get that person on your side.

So when the operator finally got on the phone (after I’d been on hold for 10 minutes), instead of launching into a tirade of insults, I started my conversation this way:

“Hi, I’ve got a problem with my recycling service and I’m hoping you can help me.” I then explained everything that had transpired–with the missed picked up last week, the missed pick up at my house only that day–and here’s what happened. The operator put me on hold so she could call the driver and send him back to my house. Then, when she got back on the phone, she told me she was crediting me for the missed service. By the time I got back from walking the dog, the recycling was all gone.

Perhaps the operator would have fixed the situation, even if I hadn’t been so pleasant. But there was another benefit to taking the “honey” approach: I didn’t end that phone call to the trash service in a bad mood. Just because there had been a problem, by keeping my point of view positive, I didn’t end up ruining my own day. And I got the outcome I wanted.